You always sounded calm and controlled in the recording. You never raised your voice. You never panicked. Same with your first officer. Amy, like you, was a study in professionalism. Yes, she screamed reflexively when the wave careened into the wingtip of the jet and you went perpendicular to the water. But you didn’t. You didn’t curse, you didn’t cry out (though the woman recording the cell phone video certainly did, exclaiming, “Oh, my God, oh, my God, it’s flipping! It’s flipping!”). You kept your composure even then, even when death appeared imminent. There was an involuntary grunt because the sensation was not unlike being punched hard in the stomach and the chest, and the yoke slammed up into your thumbs with such force that it’s a small miracle they didn’t break. But otherwise you stayed with your controls until all control was completely out of your hands. You flew your aircraft until, pure and simple, you couldn’t.
And then, the day after the crash, you endured the interrogation by the NTSB. It was all about alcohol, sleep, and food. Thank God, you recall thinking at the time, you hadn’t had even a glass of wine the night before the plane hit the birds. And you clicked shut your hotel door that evening and fell asleep watching a Red Sox game on a hotel cable station. When you flew your three legs that day, you had been sober and well rested; you had eaten well.
People have told you that you would have had a better chance of succeeding that August afternoon in an Airbus than in a CRJ, because the Airbus uses more fly-by-wire technology: A computer prevents a pilot from flying either too fast or too slowly and assures that the aircraft’s pitch and turn angles never exceed the plane’s capabilities. But the issue wasn’t bringing the plane safely to the lake: You did that. You and Amy did that together. In the end, the issue was, son of a bitch, that wave.
Still, it seems indecent to be alive today when four-fifths of your passengers and your crew are dead. You have no plans to rectify that and join them, of course: Haven’t you done enough to scar your two children already? The last thing they need now is for their father to kill himself. But when you see in your mind the black box-and you see it often, though not as frequently as the dead as they bobbed in the water and the fuselage slipped under the waves-you see also that the only place for you to live is a place like this: a sparsely populated hill in a sparsely populated corner of a sparsely populated state. You are living in exile. As an exile. Emily doesn’t view Bethel quite this way. It was her brainchild to come here in the first place. But you do. You view it precisely as an exile. Your own personal Elba.
One day when Emily is at her office in Littleton and the girls are at school and you have just been to the hardware store to get lightbulbs and Spackle and have yet another window shade cut, on your way home you decide to detour toward the office of the real estate agency where the agents-first Sheldon, then Reseda-who sold you the house work. You coast into the parking lot of the dignified mock Tudor that houses the agency and sits beside the brick library and across the street from the post office. You stare for a moment at the town common, with its pristine white gazebo and creosote black Civil War cannon, the heavy gun’s small mounted plaque honoring the White Mountain veterans of that war and the ones that followed in Europe and the Middle East. You gaze at the maple trees-willowy, sable, spiderlike-with a dusting of snow on the wider branches from last night. You wonder precisely why you have veered here and what you are going to ask.
But in you go, and there is Reseda Hill seated behind her desk with her landline phone against her ear and the screen on her computer showing a modest house for sale just off the main street in Littleton. The agent smiles when she sees you, and you stand there awkwardly, not wanting to appear to be eavesdropping on the conversation but not wanting to seem to ignore her, either. There doesn’t seem to be a receptionist, but out of nowhere another agent appears from a backroom, a woman in her mid-thirties-Reseda’s age, too, you believe-who is wearing black pants that are provocative and tight and a cashmere sweater with pearls. She has hennaed her hair and placed it back in a bun and is wearing a perfume that reminds you of lilacs. She introduces herself to you as Holly, but, before the conversation has proceeded any further, Reseda has motioned to her that she will be off the phone in a moment.
“Would you like some tea?” asks Holly, but you decline. You hear yourself telling her your name, and she says, “I know.” And you’re not taken aback. Not at all. Of course she knows your name.
“Coffee?”
“No, I’m fine. Really.” You tell her you can come back, it’s not important, because deference now leaches from you like perspiration.
“I’m sure Reseda would want to talk to you,” she insists. Then: “I’ve always thought being an airline pilot must be very glamorous. Is it?”
You find yourself smiling. It is a popular misconception. “It once was-but that was years before I started flying. The generation of pilots before me had it a little easier: They certainly weren’t eating cheese sandwiches on the flight deck.”
“The airline doesn’t feed you?”
“My first years, it did. We had vouchers. But no more. The vouchers disappeared with my pension. So, on my first leg-I’m sorry, my first flight-I would usually be eating a brown bag lunch I packed myself before leaving home. I remember some mornings, I would make three identical sandwiches: one for me and one for each of my daughters. I have two. Twins. My daughters would bring theirs to school, of course. But you know what? I liked those cheese sandwiches. I really did. You get to your cruising altitude and you eat and enjoy the view. It’s actually rather pleasant. I loved to fly.”
“Were you gone a lot?”
“Probably too much. I was usually flying four days and home three. The rules for rest are complicated, but I might fly a dozen legs those four days. Sometimes, it would be less: seven or eight. Either way, I would say I ate half my meals between thirty and thirty-five thousand feet with a paper napkin in my lap.”
“And that was safe?”
You nod. “That was safe. I was always a stickler for safety.”
Just about then your real estate agent laughs at something and hangs up the phone. She rises from the seat behind her desk, and you are struck by the suede and fur, burgundy-colored boots she is wearing, and how they haven’t any heels at alclass="underline" This really is a woman who knows how to navigate her way through a White Mountain winter.
“Chip, how are you?” she says, smiling, her eyes that beautiful, disturbing cobalt blue you noticed the first time you met and you think of whenever you think of her. Reseda is tall and trim, a slight ski jump to her nose, and her cheekbones are almost as prominent as her eyes. Her hair is darker than the chest-high wrought-iron fence that surrounds the cemetery at the edge of the village. She takes one of your hands in both of hers, and you always have the sense around her that, if you were in a big city, she would be the type who would want you to greet her with polite air kisses on both of her cheeks. Her palms are dry and cold, and yet the sensation, the touch, makes you a little warm.
“We’re settling in well, I think,” you begin. You describe your breakfasts with the view of Mount Lafayette from the kitchen and skiing periodically the past couple of weeks at the nearby resort. You make a small joke-and the joke does seem to you to be woefully inadequate-about the numbers of boxes you have unpacked and yet the numbers that remain. You wonder as you listen to the sound of your voice-a voice that once inspired confidence at thirty-five thousand feet-whether you are capable of asking the questions that have brought you here. They seem ridiculous now. Absolutely ridiculous. But, finally, you start: “You ever notice that door?”